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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Turning A Corner

I have completed the next draft of Innate Powers. It clocks in at 60 pages--probably the largest single chapter of JAGS Revised Archetypes. It is a combination of super powers, some magical stuff, and animal creation. It is not 'fully' complete because there were several abilities put in as place-holders for when we have a chance to simulate them. These are:

Regeneration

The Liquid, Gas, and Energy body powers.

A few other odds and ends.

There are a few abilties that are not in there that I would like to know how they work. These are:

Duplication: Clearly you do something like divide up your APs by duplicate and then pay a sur-chrage of some amount in order to reflect that each set of say 10 AP (assume a 40 AP character who can create 4 10-AP versions of himself) is attached to a "standard character" (an extra 10 REA and so on).

That said, how should it work? In the example above a guy built on 40 AP who splits into two 20 AP versions is going to lose badly to a peer who has it all in one character. The 40 AP guy, assuming a 50/50 Offense/Defense spit will have as much in his attack and defense as the 20 AP guy has in his whole character.

I think we can simulate this though: if Duplication creates 1/2 power versions of you, the Simulator should be able to tell how many of those stack up to a single whole-points version. We could then run that against the herds ... But I haven't done that yet.

Absorption: There are several powers around this. The one I am interested in is the one where "I get hit and get stronger." Where "stronger" can apply to a lot of different things--but mainly, I get hit and then hit harder.

The issues around this are:

How does it function mechanically? Do I buy Absorption Armor and every point of damage stopped goes ... into what? An Absorption pool ... which then ... what? Gets translated into AP somehow?

Adding AP's point-by-point to attack abilities is a pain in the ass: that's a lot of math. Maybe you just have like Standing Level, Charged, Fully Charged, and Super-Charged? To make it easier to keep track of?

Having damage convert into AP would be good--because you could use it to activate or charge up other powers (like, say, Flight). But, again--how do I do that? What if Absorption enhances defenses?

Cybernetics--pretty up to date already. A document was done that was -almost- current.

Psionics: Telepathy. A fairly modern version.

Psionics: Telekinesis. Not yet done--not too long.

Psionics: Mind Over Matter. A big section. All the "flame control" and Time Control and Liquid/Water Control stuff. It's big and complex.

Psionics: ESP. We've been working on this and I still don't have a great model in my head of how it should work. This is partially because I'm not sure how games with Espers work vs. games for Espers (where use of ESP is built into the game in some way). Basically, I'm not sure what these guys play like.

Magic: Here's stuff like illusions, summoning, some specifically "undead" powers, and so on.

Gear: I want to do a small chapter of gear to cover things like specific kinds of guns, armor, etc. So that if you are playing a game and want some AP costs to get started with "standard gear" you can choose off the list.

Back of the Book: This chapter is going to have all the rules that were alluded to in the front of the book but didn't get fleshed out there. It'll also have changes to the basic book's rules until I can do a JAGS Revised v2.

Chi Martial Arts: This is last because I'm not sure it's going in yet. I have looked it over and I think it might be well served with some more "Exotic Combat GATs" and some Innate Powers (to simulate, for example, a Chi Fireball)--and that's it. The idea of having this great tactical game 'inside' the JAGS combat system is cool--but I'm not sure it's necessary or that anyone really wants it. If you can play Ken and Ryu do you need to have super complex rules to better emulate the specifics? I don't know.